Oh yeah, we're just swimmin' in powerful new Macs these days! For instance, there are those blazingly-fast Apollo-based Power Macs introduced a couple of days ago; we've been waiting for a gigahertz forever, and Apple was kind enough to give us two. On top of that, there's the G4 iMac that prematurely burst forth from the pregnant pages of Time Magazine earlier in the month. (Masters of the unsettling mental image, that's us.) Between those two powerhouses, we're hard-pressed to imagine any self-respecting Mac user possibly wanting anything else. Except, maybe, some way to carry it all.

Let's face it-- while there are some pretty capable wheelbarrows available out there, it's still kind of a drag to be pushing a Quicksilver and a monitor or two all over town. And don't even get us started about taking that rig on a plane, because wedging everything into those overhead compartments generally necessitates the use of a crowbar and a blowtorch, and it's altogether one serious pain in the kiester. People lugging iMacs are slightly better off, because those systems are a little less unwieldy and can be hoisted by their shiny metal necks; however, at 22 pounds, they're still pretty hefty, and unless you remember to switch hands occasionally, you might wind up with One Huge Bicep and then you have to deal with children laughing at you. Plus, whether you're toting a Power Mac or an iMac, you're probably going to keep tripping over your really long extension cord.

"Why not just get an Apple portable?" you ask. Because, smart guy, we accidentally drank a mixture of paint thinner and guava nectar, and now we're laboring under the chemically-induced delusion that anyone caught without a G4 running at 700 MHz or more will be fed to the giant Lizard People of Venus, okay? (Duh.) And since the iBook is Apple's last remaining product line still using a G3, and the current PowerBooks stop short at 667 MHz, well, right now our only options are a wheelbarrow, One Huge Bicep, or taking a one-way tour through the digestive tract of a scaly alien life form. (There's that "unsettling mental image" thing again.) But maybe within a couple of months that'll change.

It's only been a few months since the last PowerBook speed bump, and barely six weeks since Apple tossed a combo drive into the mix, so it might be a teensy bit early to be thinking about the next upgrade. But heck, Macworld Expo Tokyo is still a couple of months away, so a revision at that event isn't out of the question-- certainly that's what Mac OS Rumors thinks. According to MOSR, new PowerBooks boasting Apollo G4s running at 667 and a life-saving 800 MHz on a 133 MHz system bus (plus an ATI RADEON Mobility 7500 GPU) may indeed be prepping for an intro in the Land of the Rising Sun. In the meantime, we suppose we'll stick with the wheelbarrow plan to avoid the wrath of the Lizard People. Oh, and does anyone have the number for the Poison Control Center handy?